Trump, Xi and Putin Plan Unprecedented Three-Way Meeting on APEC Sidelines in Shenzhen

On Friday the White House confirmed that Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will sit down together on Thursday, on the sidelines of next week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China's technology hub. No meeting of the three leaders has happened before, and the countries they lead are the world's biggest nuclear powers.

Analysts quoted by the Associated Press say the occasion will carry more symbolism than substance, and they expect no major breakthrough. It arrives at a complicated time. Trump has warmed to Xi since the two sides reached a truce last year in their short-lived trade war, and he has kept that warmth despite differences over the US war with Iran and other frictions between the leading economies. He has likewise courted Putin, even as the Russian leader presses a war on Ukraine that is nearly five years old and as Moscow deepens its military, intelligence and diplomatic partnership with Iran.

Trump has said the meeting would let the three discuss the Iran war and pursue his goal of a three-way agreement on nuclear stockpiles. The last arms pact between Russia and the United States, New START, expired in February, which lifted caps on the two largest arsenals for the first time in more than fifty years. Trump turned down a Russian request to extend it a year and called instead for a new, improved and modernised deal that includes China. But the Pentagon estimates China holds more than 600 warheads, while the US and Russia are each thought to hold more than 5,000. China has shown little appetite for a nuclear pact.

Of the three capitals, Beijing was the least certain about the summit's value. By hosting, Xi may calculate that he gains a chance to display China's growing clout and prestige. Edgard Kagan, a former US ambassador to Malaysia now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said he would be shocked if any joint statement mentioned denuclearisation. For the Kremlin, he said, the point is to signal that Putin and Xi are talking with Trump in a way that suggests they are making decisions on Ukraine, something Ukrainians and Europeans dislike. Russia also gets a chance to pose as a superpower on par with Washington and Beijing.

The trilateral could overshadow the APEC gathering itself, which brings 21 economies to Shenzhen and lets China show off a coastal metropolis that grew from a small fishing village into a global technology and economic centre in a few decades. Hoo Tiang Boon, a professor of Chinese foreign policy at Nanyang Technological University, said the meeting could undercut China's effort to present itself at APEC as a defender of free trade. In his words, it runs counter to Chinese support of multilateralism. It could also muddy Beijing's argument that a Western Cold War mentality helped lead to the Ukraine war, and its criticism that the US has undermined international institutions and treaties in how it has fought Iran.

The leaders know one another well in pairs. Putin and Xi have met more than 40 times since Xi became president in 2013 and call each other "dear friend." Trump and Putin have met seven times, most recently in Alaska in August 2025. Trump and Xi have met eight times, including Xi's state visit to Washington in September.

China is Russia's number one trading partner, a tie that has strengthened since Putin sent troops into Ukraine in 2022. As the EU and the West tried to isolate Russia economically, China bought more of its energy and became its principal supplier of key technologies, including high-tech components for Russian weapons industries, ignoring Western demands to stop. Before the invasion, Xi and Putin declared a "no-limits friendship." China officially calls itself neutral while charging that Kyiv's Western allies helped provoke Russia. Moscow has repeatedly backed Beijing's policy on Taiwan.

Trump recently struck a diesel deal with Russia, waiving sanctions to allow the sale of millions of tons of fuel. He has blamed surging energy prices on Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, though analysts say the rise in crude prices stems mostly from the Iran war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has voiced concern that the meeting could become a venue for discussing a Ukraine deal behind Kyiv's back.

Some have compared the plan to the 1945 Yalta Conference, where the US, Britain and the Soviet Union agreed to split Germany and Berlin into four occupation zones and finalised plans for the United Nations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the comparison, noting that anything agreed in Shenzhen cannot be enforced on others. He called the meeting extremely significant, but said global order should rest on mutual benefit and respect, not imposed views. What to watch next week is whether anything beyond the photographs emerges, especially on arms control and Ukraine.